Question

So I’m on commission for a website, and I’m trying to improve my code. When dealing with a website with multiple types of font (here it’s large, there it’s small, there it’s bold, here it’s underlined, etc.) is this where we use the h1-h6, or do we reserve those for times when there is a definite hierarchy, using instead <p class="xxx"> to define different classes for text?

Answer 1

1. You determine why it should be large, small, bold, underlined or etc.
2. You write markup which expresses the semantics you determined in 1 using div and span (the semantic free elements) if nothing more appropriate exists and adding class and id if you need something more specific then anything that HTML provides explicitly.
3. You write CSS selectors that match that markup for rulesets that apply those styles

So only use headings if you have headings, and use them in order. h1 for the main heading, h2 for subheadings, h3 for subsubheadings, etc.

If you can’t generate a sensible table of contents from the headings, then you almost certainly aren’t using them correctly.